


In Which the Ladies Gather with Their Aquatic Plushies and Figure Shit Out

by Dandesun



Series: In Which Shenanigans Ensue [8]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Aquatic Plushies, Bucky Barnes & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Bucky's Imagination is Fertile and Varied, Everyone loves Steve, Gen, Getting to the TRUTH, Horrible Spying, Jane Foster & Darcy Lewis Friendship, Jane Foster & Steve Rogers Friendship, Making Friends, Natasha Makes Friends, Pre-Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Sisters Doing It For Themselves, Some talk of getting roofied, Steve's a little shit, Wanda Maximoff & Darcy Lewis Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-12
Updated: 2017-04-12
Packaged: 2018-10-17 20:45:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10601898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dandesun/pseuds/Dandesun
Summary: The Great Misunderstanding has reached critical mass. Things just don't add up. So, of course, the ladies figure it's time to get to the bottom of all of this. Bad spy games, plush animals and shenanigans ensue.





	

Darcy Lewis had fantasies of being Emma Peel. And why not? Everyone knew that Emma Peel was made of fabulous in a butt-kicking catsuit and an on point sixties flip hair-do. Well, once they realized who Darcy was talking about, that is. Darcy’s mother had been a big fan of Emma Peel which is how Darcy came to know of her and Darcy believed very strongly in sharing awesome things with those not in the know.

Wanda Maximoff was the most recent recipient of Darcy’s Teachings About Emma Peel so Darcy was particularly eager to team up with her and find out the truth about James Fucking Barnes as if they were in an awesome sixties spy show. They just needed the right music. If only Guy Ritchie were available to create their soundtrack. As it was, Darcy would have to borrow liberally from _Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels_ , _The Man from UNCLE_ and _Ocean’s Eleven_ although it was hard to find the specific soundtrack to the original _Ocean’s 11_ so Darcy figured that a lot of Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr and Frank Sinatra would help.

These things were important.

Wanda discovered very quickly that Darcy knew absolutely nothing about spying in a real life context. She also knew nothing about being stealthy because Darcy’s ‘quiet voice’ could probably still be heard over a jet engine. Wanda admits to not knowing much about spying herself but she comes from a country that was on the edge of the Iron Curtain and feels that her genetics alone probably knew more about it than Darcy did at any given moment.

It was the codenames that almost did Wanda in. Darcy suggested ‘Toblerone’ and ‘Ferrero Rocher’ and Wanda just facepalmed. “Those aren’t codenames! That’s just your blood sugar levels and chocolate cravings talking.”

So they went to get something chocolate at the bookstore because it had surprisingly sophisticated choices in sweets.

“All right,” Wanda’s first language wasn’t English but she spoke it very well. There were a few things that didn’t come naturally, though, and ‘okay’ was one of them. As a result, she sounded a bit more formal than she probably meant to be sometimes. “You say this is all for Steve so we are going to see this through despite your horrible ideas. Now is the time to be logical. What is the goal?”

“To discover the truth about James Barnes,” Darcy said promptly.

“What is this truth and what does it have to do with Steve?”

“I think Barnes totally has a crush on Steve,” Darcy replied. “I tried to tell Jane and she didn’t believe me. Then I told her it was like Tauriel and Kili from The Hobbit and she literally screamed at me. ‘They’re not in the books! There is no Tauriel and there is no elf-dwarf forbidden love story!’ Then she swore at me in elven. Or science talk. Sometimes it’s hard to tell. Anyway, Jane is not going to believe us until we come back with some irrefutable proof. That’s because she’s all about peer-reviewed scientific method. It would probably be a good idea to bring her something to make her forget about my bringing up the forbidden Hobbit love story. Maybe some of this chocolate.” (The truth is that Jane absolutely knew that something didn’t fit right with James Barnes but Darcy bringing up Tauriel and Kili pushed one of her rage buttons.)

Wanda took all this in with narrowed eyes. She considered for a moment. “You should know better than to start in with Jane about anything Tolkien,” she began. “I haven’t even known you all that long but I know that. I think you’re right about Barnes crushing on Steve, though.”

“You do?”

“My brother knows Thor and Thor hangs out with Barnes. Apparently, Barnes talks about Steve a lot.”

“What about?” Darcy was very eager for this information.

Wanda furrowed her brow. “Hard to say. Pietro gets bored with many conversations practically the moment they start so he didn’t have a lot of information. He just said that Thor gets embarrassed by a lot of the things Barnes says about Steve.”

“That’s not much to go on.”

“Thor doesn’t get embarrassed by much,” Wanda pointed out. “He went to practice naked once because some jerks thought stealing his clothes would keep him from going and qualifying for regionals.”

“Pietro remembers this?”

“Thor Odinson?” Wanda blinked. “Spinning and throwing a hammer completely naked? Very memorable. It doesn’t matter who you are. Pietro said that the coaches kind of got upset even though he threw well enough to qualify. They just said he should wear clothes because he gave everyone a complex.”

Darcy cackled gleefully. “This is the kind of gossip that’s worth knowing!”

“Well, don’t get too excited. That’s about it. Like I said, Pietro can’t seem to concentrate when people are actually talking. He just concentrates on running.”

“Ironic, since running is the most boring thing in the world.”

“Thor stares at Jane all the time,” Wanda said suddenly.

“Really?”

Wanda nodded.

Darcy considered that for a bit and then a ridiculous smile spread across her face and her whole body actually quivered. “Oh, this is too much. If Barnes is crushing on Steve and Thor is crushing on Jane? How cute would all of that be?”

“That depends on whether or not Steve and Jane are interested.”

There were a lot of reasons Wanda liked Steve so much. They shared a lot of ideas about consent. He was very sympathetic about how just because someone liked you it didn’t mean you had to like them back. Wanda had had to deal with people fetishizing her accent in the creepiest of ways. Steve never did that. That was one reason. And she liked Steve so much that she agreed to team up with Darcy to help him. (If, indeed, that’s what they were doing. The jury was still out on that one.) Darcy understood where they were coming from but sometimes it really screwed with the romance as far as she was concerned. Darcy loved romance. And, sure, romance was nice but Wanda wasn’t entirely certain Darcy knew what the endgame here was.

“I just don’t think Steve would be very happy to know that Barnes has a crush on him,” Wanda continued. “Actually, I _know_ he wouldn’t be happy about it.”

“Which is why we have to figure out the truth.”

“Which brings us back to the beginning! What is this ‘truth’ we’re looking for?”

“The truth about James Barnes,” Darcy insisted, steadfastly ignoring Wanda’s air-quotes. “Is he really Asshole Number Three? Is he actually friends with that piece of shit Rumlow because he doesn’t seem to know why Steve hates him. And if he doesn’t know…”

“Maybe he’s stupid,” Wanda said bluntly.

Well, Darcy supposed that was a possibility. It just seemed unlikely. “I’ve seen him hanging out with Tony Stark. Stark doesn’t hang out with stupid people.”

“He does if they compliment him enough.”

“Yeah but not for very long,” Darcy tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Let me put this out there… what if _we’re_ wrong about James Fucking Barnes?”

Wanda screwed her lips up as she thought about that. “Well, if we’re wrong about him then we have to stop calling him James Fucking Barnes. It’s rude if he’s not an actual asshole.”

“Unless we become super good friends with him and then we can start calling him that because friends totally rag on each other all the time.”

“I think you’re getting ahead of yourself,” Wanda sighed. “And slightly off topic. How do we find out the truth?”

“We spy on him!!”

 _This is for Steve,_ Wanda reminded herself. _Steve. Steve who is interesting and kind and good and never makes fun of me for my accent or when I get words wrong. This is for Steve._ “Explain.”

So Darcy explained her plan and all Wanda could think was that they had better be wrong about James Fucking Barnes because if they weren’t, he could probably corner them and not good things would happen. As a contingency plan, she texted it all to Pietro and asked him to keep an eye out for her. If there was something other than running that Pietro could concentrate on for an extended period of time, it was being overprotective of Wanda.

=============================

“My sister and her friend are spying on your friend,” Pietro peered at his phone as a series of pings announced a ridiculous amount of text messages.

“What?” Thor asked.

Pietro sighed loudly and his entire body sagged in a dramatic fashion. He loathed repeating himself. It was boring.

“Which friend?” Thor clarified after Pietro’s ‘oh God, please kill me now’ theatrics that always followed anyone saying ‘What?’ to him. In some ways, Pietro reminded Thor of his little brother Loki. He often wondered if they would get along. The idea was a little terrifying.

“Barnes?” Pietro looked at the series of messages again.

“Which friend of your sister’s?” Thor apparently had to clarify further because he knew that Pietro’s sister hung out with a group that included Jane Foster, the petite genius girl of the science department with the long beautiful hair and warm smile, and also Steve Rogers, the tiny, angry paladin of truth and justice that Bucky liked to talk about in the most graphic manner and gaze at in an impossibly more graphic manner.

Pietro’s fingers flew as he messaged his sister. “Darcy,” he replied.

Oh. The loud one. “Hm,” Thor was suddenly less interested in interrupting the spying. If it had been Jane Foster, he would have figured out a way to wander over and see what was up. He really wanted to talk to her about science (because she lit up like a rainbow when she did) so he could take an opportunity to look thoughtful at her and flex. He wasn’t sure if flexing would impress someone as smart as her but it hadn’t failed him yet. Also, he wanted to know what would inspire her to smile that warm smile at him.

But Jane Foster wasn’t involved in whatever this was.

“I’ll text Natasha,” he mused. “Let her know.”

===================================

It was farce. That was what it was.

Natasha had been observing the on-going antics of the loud one and the one with all the bracelets for three days now. What had started as a lark was now borderline offensive. Maybe if this was part of some school project? Nat didn’t know what that project might be… Horrible Spying 101. Actually, this was probably Horrible Spying 501. That’s how bad it was.

The one with the bracelets was Wanda. She was Pietro’s sister. Thor knew Pietro through whatever athletic stuff they did. Thor threw hammers and Pietro ran. Natasha went to a couple of practices but was vastly disappointed that it wasn’t some dodgeball situation where Thor threw hammers at Pietro who dodged them through some kind of obstacle course. They were on completely different parts of the field and Natasha ended up reading three of the four pieces from that week’s American Lit class to alleviate her boredom.

Bucky had caught on to being followed pretty quickly. He had texted Nat that he was being followed by a tinkling, clattering sound in the hallways of the engineering building after two separate classes. Then he texted shortly after saying Pietro’s sister was the reason, except why?

Nat had informed him that a couple of Steve Rogers’ friends were following him and had then been very happy that she didn’t have to deliver this news in person because Bucky was emoting _through the phone_ at the possibilities. 

**JB:** Steve’s friends are following me? Why are Steve’s friends following me?  
**JB:** Do you think he told them to follow me?  
**JB:** Why would he tell them to follow me?  
**JB:** Maybe he’s not mad at me anymore.  
**JB:** Remember, he stared at my crotch the other day.  
**JB:** Tell his friends that I’m okay with that and would like to return the favor.  
**JB:** But in a naked way.

This is what Natasha had to put up with.

 **Nat:** I am not your crotch staring broker.  
**Nat:** Stop it.  
**Nat:** I’ll find out what’s going on. Get your libido under control.

Then she muted her phone and did some spying of her own.

What Natasha found out was that the loud one (Darcy) and Pietro’s sister (Wanda) were doing this together and no one else in their group seemed to have any idea. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. The other three seemed to catch on that _something_ was going on but they didn’t seem to want to push the issue.

Natasha had planted herself in a secure spot and overheard Steve and Jane discuss it in passing. 

“Do you know what Wanda and Darcy are being all weird and giggly about?” Steve asked.

“I have no idea,” Jane replied shortly. “I just hope bail money won’t be required.”

So Natasha focused on Wanda and Darcy. Minimal observation had Natasha concluding that this was all Darcy’s brainchild so she waited until Wanda had class and ambushed Darcy herself.

“Why are you following my friend?”

Darcy actually squeaked.

It was a nice ambush. Wait around the corner and fire the question at her before Darcy even finished reacting to Nat’s presence.

“Who says I’m following him?”

Natasha narrowed her eyes. “You’re bad at this. The innocent act doesn’t work. What’s the deal?”

Darcy was silent for several moments sizing Natasha up. “We’re just trying to figure something out.”

“What?”

“Something!”

Natasha heaved a sigh. “Come with me.”

“Where?”

“To my dorm.”

Darcy looked uncertain.

“Stop it. We live in the same building. And I want to get to the bottom of this before I lose all patience with everyone ever.”

Darcy was not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Rumors abounded around campus about Natasha Romanov and now Darcy had just gotten an invitation (order) to visit her dorm room? “Okay.”

Natasha had promised Bucky she’d get intel. She’d told him she had a source. She hadn’t told him that her source was going to be one of Steve Rogers’ friends and, actually, Darcy was the one she thought would be the best option. Darcy was one of those loud, gregarious people that wouldn’t shut up once you got them going. Of course, if she had told Bucky this, he would have declared her plan stupid and then told Thor to go talk to Piotr Rasputin. Or he might have gone to Rasputin on his own, perhaps under the guise of needing tutoring in Russian.

Bucky didn’t need tutoring in Russian but it might have been good for him to take matters into his own hands and figure out The Steve Rogers Problem on his own.

Oh well, too late for that. Besides, Natasha felt it necessary to vet Rogers’ friends and see if they were the kind of people she could trust to be around Bucky. Bucky looked like a smooth, naughty bad boy but he wore his heart on his sleeve and didn’t have much of a filter. Natasha was pretty sure that the only reason Bucky didn’t get punched the way Steve Rogers did was because Bucky was taller, stronger and had a very effective scowl.

Darcy was a horrible spy but she swept Natasha’s room quickly and zeroed in on two things: the Cinderella memorabilia and the plush manatee.

“You know, it always kind of annoys me that Cinderella gets all the blue stuff while Aurora is pink,” Darcy said with some authority. “Cinderella’s dress was an icy blue-white, right? And Aurora spent the majority of her time in that dress with it blue. But over the years it’s like they’ve turned Cinderella’s dress more and more _blue_ to differentiate them or something… like you couldn’t tell them apart unless their dresses were different colors.”

Natasha smiled slightly.

“It’s always interesting to me who people like the most in the Disney movies.”

“Who’s your favorite?” Natasha asked. 

“Well, the first movie I saw when I was little was _The Rescuers_ so I’ve always had a fondness for Miss Bianca but I have to admit that Queen Elsa is pretty awesome. I love that she’s all ‘You can’t marry someone you just met’ when Anna’s all ‘Hey! Here’s this rando that I literally fell on. We’re in love!’ I mean, I know it’s a trope but it’s nice that they acknowledge the trope and how ridiculous it is.”

“You don’t believe in love at first sight?”

“Lust? Yes,” Darcy said firmly. “Love? No. But I know a lot of people confuse the two.” She looked down at the bed. “So what’s your manatee’s name?”

“Lorelei.”

Darcy whipped out her phone and texted rapidly. “So, I’m telling Jane and Wanda to come here because it’s pretty obvious we all need to have a pow-wow. We’re on your turf so I need some backup. But, really, I think this is going to be good. I think this is all going to be very good.”

Natasha agreed, sort of. She had a feeling that if she just stayed quiet long enough, Darcy would spill everything and that’s not something she envisioned happening with Jane and Wanda around. They were more protective, or at least, more obviously so. Still, with all three of them Natasha was far more likely to get the whole story.

Whatever that was.

She glanced at her phone and saw a lot of texts from Bucky. She texted him back saying she was working on intel and to just relax. Not that this would work, she knew, but she could try.

It was about twenty minutes before Jane and Wanda showed up in the doorway looking a bit wary. They each had stuffed animals with them. The stuffed animals were all aquatic. Jane handed a much-loved seahorse to Darcy and asked, “What’s going on?”

“Well, first,” Darcy bounced on the bed that was obviously not Natasha’s, “we should introduce each other.” She holds up the seahorse. “This is Seabiscuit. And he’s very pleased to meet Lorelei.”

Natasha instinctively reached for Lorelei and settled her on her lap.

Wanda and Jane noticed and seemed to catch on a bit.

“Okay,” Jane said, holding up a purple starfish. “This is Quasar and he’s about as confused as I am about what’s going on.”

Wanda’s plush was an octopus with a monocle. “This is Professor Octavian von Tentacle. He’s fancy.” She closed her hand lightly around the one of one of his arms and slid her bracelets off of her wrist and onto his tentacle. “Also useful.”

Natasha snorted in appreciation. “This is Lorelei. I got her when I was seven. I used to pretend she was a sharp-toothed, fire-breathing manatee but as I got older I liked the idea of her luring stupid sailors to their death and being disappointed that they never had any lettuce on them.”

There were soft chuckles in response to that before the room fell into silence.

“Okay,” Jane piped up. “I’ll bite. Is this about Barnes?”

“You tell me,” Natasha responded. “They’re the ones following him.”

Jane turned to give them both A Look. “When I told you to find out what was going on I honestly didn’t think you’d go straight for the spying.”

“They shouldn’t have,” Natasha nodded. “They’re horrible at it. Also, Pietro told Thor who told me.”

Darcy sent an accusatory look at Wanda.

“I felt better having some backup in case things went wrong. I made a call based on what we know.”

“Which is what?” Natasha asked.

“What we _think_ we know,” Darcy amended loudly. “Which is that Barnes is buddies with Rumlow who is a walking piece of shit and should be in jail.”

“Rumlow’s the guy that Rogers is always hissing at,” Natasha pieced that bit together out loud. “Right? That weasel looking guy who’s always got that other meathead following him around.” She rolled her eyes. “Believe me, Bucky is not friends with either one of them.”

A trio of slightly confused expressions greeted this. “Bucky?” Jane asked.

“Oh,” Natasha huffed out a laugh. “Yes. James goes by Bucky. Because of reasons…” she waved a hand dismissively. “And I can honestly only say it a certain number of times before I have to call him James. He thinks I’m an idiot. ‘What’s your problem with it? It’s my fuckin’ name!’” She mimicked her friend. “Anyway, this is about Rumlow? That’s why Rogers hates Bucky?”

Darcy and Wanda slid their gazes towards Jane.

Jane narrowed her eyes. “Don’t say it like that… there have been at least four separate occasions where Rumlow did something and Barnes was there. He either backed Rumlow up or just stood by and let it happen. This isn’t something Steve imagined.”

It was Natasha’s turn to narrow her eyes. “That doesn’t sound right at all. James doesn’t hang out with Rumlow and every time he runs into him it just annoys the hell out of him. They _aren’t_ friends.”

“Barnes yelled at Steve to back off of Rumlow at Halloween. _After_ Rumlow broke Steve’s nose when Steve was protecting me.”

Natasha just looked confused. “Look, I know what I know. Rumlow is no friend of James’ and Halloween is when James got the huge crush on your friend.”

“I _knew_ it!” Darcy crowed triumphantly.

“Not the point,” Jane elbowed her. “Something doesn’t add up because Barnes said he didn’t know what he did.”

“When did he say that?” Natasha asked. “Was that after the library?”

There was a bit of a pause as the other three sized her up again.

“Yes,” Darcy burst out. “Steve wasn’t feeling well, stretched too far, too fast, was obsessed with Barnes’ coat and Sam said that Barnes wanted to know what he did.”

“Well, see?” Natasha felt vindicated. “If he was the guy yelling at Rogers why would he be confused about why he’s angry?”

“Steve doesn’t just make shit up out of nowhere,” Jane insisted. “But we know something’s off… Rumlow at least knows why we hate him. Barnes doesn’t and that’s… well, that’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”

“Okay,” Natasha got her phone out. “Time to get answers.”

 **Nat:** Why did you yell at Rogers to back off at Halloween?  
**JB:** What?  
**JB:** What are you talking about?  
**JB:** I would never do that.

“He says he would never do that.”

Jane left the side of the room she was on and sat down next to Natasha to look at the text. She then got her phone out. “I hope he’s not elbow deep in paint right now…”

 **Jane:** You’re sure that Barnes was the one telling you to back off at the Halloween party?

There was a wait of about five minutes.

 **Steve:** The hell?  
**Jane:** C’mon, Steve. Just answer the question.  
**Steve:** Of course it was him.  
**Jane:** You’re sure.  
**Steve:** Kind of hard to forget, Janey. Where’s this coming from?

Jane chewed her lip, furrowing her brow as she gauged just how much to tell Steve.

 **Jane:** Something doesn’t add up and he seems pretty certain that he did no such thing.  
**Steve:** Are you with him right now?!  
**Jane:** No.. no.. just… please be sure.  
**Steve:** Janey. He looked right at me and his face twisted into a snarl as he yelled ‘Back off!’ when that piece of shit threw his arm around Barnes’ shoulder. I remember.

Jane showed Natasha the message.

Natasha frowned fiercely at it and then raised her eyes to Jane. A smile quirked at one side of her mouth. Jane’s eyebrows went up questioningly.

“I think I know what happened.”

“Do tell.”

“You have to understand,” Natasha’s smile turned conspiratory. “Bucky’s absolutely stupid in love with Rogers. Seriously. I could tell you the hours I’ve spent listening to him go on and on and on about what he thinks Rogers ass looks like or the things he would like Rogers to do to him. The time Steve got punched by that evangelist on campus I thought Bucky was going to bust into a million pieces. He’s ridiculously in awe of your friend.”

“Okay,” Jane sent a quick glance at Darcy and Wanda, who were listening intently.

“If I know Bucky, and I do,” Natasha nodded her head, “he was too busy gazing at Steve to remember to look at Rumlow and tell him to back off. Halloween is the first time Bucky saw your boy. He kept going on about the ‘angry little cat boy’ and how beautiful he was.”

“Oh my God, I might die of this,” Darcy whispered. Of course, her whisper was anything but. 

Wanda facepalmed.

“Seriously, this is the cutest thing I’ve ever heard. Seabiscuit agrees with me.” She made a noise that could be interpreted as a horse’s whinny underwater.

Wanda grabbed the seahorse from Darcy’s hands and whacked her over the head with it before giving it back. “Look,” she sighed. “It’s a reasonable theory… this… forgot to not look at Steve while he was yelling at someone else. I understand, I stared at him for a week before I went and introduced myself.”

“By introduce, she means ‘sat with us at our table and told Steve she wanted to be friends with him,’” Darcy explained. “And then very nicely included us because if Steve was friends with us she wanted to be, too.”

Natasha grinned. “Is everyone in love with Steve Rogers?”

The other three girls laughed. “In some fashion, probably,” Wanda smiled. “He’s kind and he’s interesting.”

“Here’s the deal,” Jane said, her voice firm. “Brock Rumlow roofied me on Halloween. He and his tagalong, Rollins, teamed up to distract me, drug me and then… well, it’s not hard to figure out what they had planned after that.”

Natasha was suitable aghast even as her mouth hardened. The next time _she_ saw Rumlow trying to cozy up to Bucky would not end well if she had any say in it.

“Steve saw what happened and his first move was to get me the hell away from them. For his trouble, he got a broken nose when Rumlow punched him. Also, he loudly announced what happened so the crowd that had gathered to watch the skinny, short kid get his ass kicked could hear it.”

“Yeah, suddenly they didn’t want anything to do with any of it,” Darcy continued. “But they heard what Steve said… some of them didn’t care. Some of them did.”

“I did,” Wanda nodded. “And word has filtered around. Rumlow has tried to rough Steve up a few times since then because he blames Steve for his bad reputation. You know, as if it’s Steve’s fault that Rumlow likes to drug girls or something.”

“You say that Barnes isn’t friends with him,” Jane said quietly. “That’s as may be, but does he _know_ about this?”

“I can’t believe for a second that he does,” Natasha replied firmly. “Bucky has a little sister. He’s a sweet guy. I mean, I know he looks like--”

“Sex on a stick?” Darcy offered. She looked absolutely unrepentant when Wanda and Jane shot her warning looks. “What? He does. Especially with the longer hair.”

“Anyway,” Nat continued. “As much as he looks like this tough guy, he’s a complete sweetheart. A teddy bear. There’s no way he’d be down for someone he hung out with using roofies. He’s _my_ friend and he’s never treated me like… like an _acquisition_.”

“God, if that’s the case, he and Steve really need to meet,” Darcy muttered.

“He needs to know about Rumlow,” Wanda said. “And maybe get his head out of his ass whenever Steve’s within sight and put the kibosh on whatever it is Rumlow’s trying to get away with there.”

“Bucky getting his head out of his ass around Steve might be harder than you think,” Natasha shrugged. “But we should at least get them together and hash this out. It’s not fair to Bucky to have Steve be thinking these awful things about him and it’s probably not fair to Steve to let him think awful things about a person who doesn’t deserve it. There are plenty of people on canvas he can think badly about with good reason.” She smiled slightly. “Besides, you three are pretty cool… horrible spying aside… and I wouldn’t mind hanging out with you. There aren’t many girls I get along with. I don’t want to have to sneak around or get called a shit stain garbage person for being the friend of a friend of Rumlow’s.”

“How are we going to get it all squared?” Jane asked. “I’m _not_ going to ambush Steve with it. That will not end well at _all_. And it’s a shitty thing to do to him.”

“So tell him the truth,” Natasha cocked her head. “Based on everything you’ve said about him, he’d at least be interested in that.”

“Good point,” Jane nodded. 

“So…” Natasha looked at the three girls again. Then at their plushies. She focused on Darcy. “You called us all together because of the plushies, didn’t you?”

“Well, it always helps to start from a place of unity,” Darcy replied. “If you have something in common, you can go from there.”

Even the loud one was pretty smart, Natasha realized. This could be good. She liked them. And it would be good to have girl friends who weren’t part of the dancing school. That always got competitive and weird. “So… does Steve have an aquatic plushie?”

“No,” Wanda sighed.

“What would you get him?” Nat asked.

“A narwhal,” they replied in unison.

Nat’s eyebrows shot up. “Is that so? Why?”

Three smirks were the first answer.

“They’re like an underwater unicorn,” Darcy said.

“They have a kick-ass facial horn,” Wanda continued, gesturing with one hand where the horn might go.

“They are the Jedi of the sea,” Jane nodded.

“They keep Cthulu eatin’ ye!” the three said together before cracking up.

“Oh my God,” Natasha covered her face with her manatee and burst out laughing. “You’re all idiots!”

Which resulted in the four of them programming their numbers into each others’ phones.

“I don’t know about anyone else but I’m really curious as to what Barnes has been saying about Steve,” Darcy piped up.

“Of course, you would want to know that,” Jane rolled her eyes.

“Be careful what you wish for,” Natasha warned. “It’s unbelievably graphic. I thought I was prepared. I was not prepared. I completely fake being unimpressed by the things that come out of his mouth but inside, sometimes, I’m trying to figure out how some of it would even work logistically. I’m a dancer! I’m flexible but some of the things Bucky comes up with I’m not sure where he gets them… porn and Cirque du Soleil, I guess.”

“I really feel that we should hang out with Bucky more,” Darcy declared.

“Wanda,” Jane smiled. “Hit her with Seabiscuit again.”

Wanda did so but started laughing. “I admit I’m curious to see Sam’s face if Bucky starts talking about these sorts of things in front of him.”

Jane’s lips twitched. “Alright, I’m convinced.”

The conversation shifted, then, to talk of movies and music and classes and teachers. They each came from a different place and studied different things and their conversation flowed casually from one thing to another.

Natasha could see them all fitting together. Her group with Thor and Bucky and Tony and Bruce and this group with Wanda, Darcy, Jane, Sam and Steve. She could see it working… all of these personalities. It was nice.

Even if they were horrible at spying.

Although, if Natasha had to choose, she’d pick Jane as her spy partner. Jane had a sharp, analytical mind. She filed that information away for later.

And it may be that Natasha and Jane were ultimately responsible for Brock Rumlow’s unceremonious departure from Kirby and Lee College at the end of third year. They’d never tell, though.

Good spies never do.


End file.
